The Chalcolithic tell of Ghabristan in northwest Iran is now buried by alluvium and a magnetometer survey of the tell and its surroundings was undertaken to reveal any features under this cover. After the
abandonment of the tell in the late third millennium BC it was used as an Iron Age cemetery by inhabitants of the neighbouring tell of Sagzabad. The magnetometer data show a related irregularly shaped
channel that is also considered to be of Iron Age date.Its shallow burial depth, compared with the thick
sedimentary layers underneath, indicates a considerable slowdown of alluviation rates in the second millennium BC, possibly related to environmental changes. The survey also found evidence for undisturbed
buried building remains, most likely associated with copper workshops.

Iron Age studies in northern Britain have been dominated by one monument form, the broch. This focus on these monumental towers of the Atlantic Scotland, perhaps at the expense of other archaeological evidence, has brought about a strong division in the archaeological community. MacKie and Armit have both recently summarized the development of broch studies detailing the opposing arguments for the date of construction. In recent years archaeological evidence for these monuments has indicated an indigenous development rather than being associated with the movement of Iron Age peoples. This paper presents new chronological data for the construction of a Shetland broch and examines the archaeological repercussions for the 'early' chronology provided by these dates. Excavations at Old Scatness in the South Mainland of Shetland have revealed new evidence for a broch and defended Iron Age Village.

Following Wheeler's excavations at Maiden Castle, the multivallate hillforts of Wessex came to be seen as responses to a specific form of warfare based around the massed use of slings. As part of the wider post-processual 'rethink' of the British Iron Age during the late 1980s and 1990s, this traditional 'military' interpretation of hillforts was increasingly subject to criticism. Apparent weaknesses in hillfort design were identified and many of the most distinctive features of these sites (depth of enclosure, complexity of entrance arrangements, etc) were reinterpreted as symbols of social isolation. Yet this 'pacification' of hillforts is in many ways as unsatisfactory as the traditional vision. Both camps have tended to view warfare as a detached, functional, and disembedded activity which can be analysed in terms of essentially timeless concepts of military efficiency. Consideration of the use of analogous structures in the ethnographic record suggests that, far from being mutually exclusive, the military and symbolic dimensions are both essential to a more nuanced understanding of the wider social role of hillforts in Britain and beyond.

The occurrence of human remains in Iron Age domestic contexts in southern England is well-attested and has been the subject of considerable recent debate. Less well known are the human remains from settlement contexts in other parts of Iron Age Britain. In Atlantic Scotland, human bodies and body parts are found consistently, if in small numbers, in Atlantic roundhouses, wheelhouses, and other settlement forms. Yet these have remained unsynthesised and individual assemblages have tended to be interpreted on a site-specific basis, if at all. Examination of the material as a corpus suggests a complex and evolving set of attitudes to the human body, its display, curation, and disposal, and it is improbable that any single interpretation (such as excarnation, retention of war trophies, or display of ancestral relics) will be sufficient. Although the specific practices remain diverse and essentially local, certain concerns appear common to wider areas, and some, for instance the special treatment accorded to the head, have resonances far beyond Iron Age Britain.

Brochs are one of the ultimate expressions of regional diversity in the British Iron Age, a geographically restricted, monumental and complex variant of the roundhouse. They are the best-preserved Iron Age dwellings in Britain if not Europe, often requiring the visitor to duck to avoid the lintel as they enter the building, and yet too often they have been sidelined as local curiosities in wider narratives of the period. This trend has been bucked in recent years in the specialist literature, with more theoretically-informed interpretations; here Armit sets out to place broch studies before a wider audience.

Rheged has been well known to historians for some time, but it is usually considered from the standpoint of the written sources. This paper seeks to begin the process of wider examination, firstly by discussing salient aspects of the archaeological setting, specifically the Iron Age and Roman background. Secondly, attention is drawn to those elements of the archaeological and written record relating to the location of Rheged, as well as to kingship and power. Earlier assumptions as to the location of Rheged are challenged, and it is suggested that its focus was in the Rhinns of Galloway.
By the late sixth century Rheged, led by its great king Urien, was in existence, but it proved to be transient, and within a century or so of the earliest references in the literature, it had become absorbed into the expanding kingdom of Northumbria. Later, the Men of the North provided the heroic ancestry and models appropriate to kings in Wales, and ultimately found a place in one of the most enduring themes in medieval romantic literature.

Excavations were carried out on the tidal islet settlement of Eilean Maleit, previously excavated by
Erskine Beveridge in the early part of this century, to test the hypothesis that the site represented a
wheelhouse built into an earlier Atlantic roundhouse or broch. It is clear from the re-excavation that
the wheelhouse was indeed set into an earlier massive-walled dry stone structure, probably an Atlantic
roundhouse but almost certainly not a classic broch tower. The denuded condition of this early
structure when the wheelhouse was built suggests that a significant period of time may have elapsed
between the occupation of the two structures. Publication of this work is sponsored by Historic
Scotland.

Rerigonium, a place-name in Ptolemy¿s Geography, is thought to have been located in the Rhinns of Galloway, but its site has never been identified. There is a strong circumstantial case for regarding the Innermessan area on the eastern side of Loch Ryan as being the likely locus of Rerigonium. Why is this of interest? It is contended that the name, in both the British and Old Welsh forms, indicates an important function perhaps in the pre-Roman Iron Age in connection with the Novantae, as well as the obscure post-Roman entity known as Rheged.

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